Tag Archives: Germans

The Best Of Both Worlds

April 3, 2016 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

It’s a win-win situation for Germany again.

Austria

Austria solves the Germans’ refugee problem but they can still bitch and moan about how awful Austria is for having put up the mean and nasty border fence that did the solving. Once you’ve climbed the moral high ground you never come down, I guess.

Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia have all brought in no-nonsense measures over the last few months which have sealed up the Balkans route and dissuaded tens of thousands of migrants from making the journey north from Greece.

Astonishingly, beleaguered Mrs Merkel has persistently railed against the reintroduction of border controls, even though they may end up saving her career as Germany’s leader.

Die Alleingänge müssen enden.

I Didn’t Believe This For One Second

April 1, 2016 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It took me about half the article before I finally figured out what was going on.

April

But I’m a real sucker for this kind of stuff: Formula 1 racing is coming to Berlin in 2017?

Anyone who knows anything about Germans knows they love cars. So it wasn’t immediately obvious that the Berliner Zeitung’s joke about plans for a new Formula One race on the streets of the capital wasn’t true – all the more so since Berlin already hosts a Formula E (electric) race each year.

A mocked-up image showed German Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel doing donuts on the Pariser Platz, site of the Brandenburg Gate. The supposed 5.85-kilometre course through Berlin is similar to the lengths of the actual races in Monaco and Melbourne. And they even considered the impact on residents: the F1 cars were allegedly to be equipped with silencers designed to limit the noise for complaint-prone Berliners.

April, April (April Fools’ Day) or something.

Zu Promozwecken war Sebastian Vettel schon mal mit seinem Boliden in Berlin. Im kommenden Jahr darf er hier auch ein Rennen fahren.

PS: I think anybody who thinks up pranks like these ought to be sent to German prison. As a reward, I mean.

Too Far?

March 31, 2016 By in Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

To the right?

AfD

If you say “the immigration of Muslims will change our culture” these days, then I guess you are. That’s radical right-wing or something.

I’m not against immigration, but why do you think the respect for other opinions makes immigration a necessity? For decades, there has been a lack of an ideology-free debate on this issue. Yet such a debate is imperative because the economic and social consequences on both home and host countries are equally momentous, as Oxford economist Paul Collier described in his book “Exodus.” One thing is clear: The immigration of so many Muslims will change our culture. If this change is desired, it must be the product of a democratic decision supported by a broad majority. But Ms. Merkel simply opened the borders and invited everybody in, without consulting the parliament or the people.

Meanwhile… The Islamic State is urging attacks on the German chancellery. Damn. If they were ever to form a political party here in Germany they could really pose a threat to the AfD. You know, stealing voters and stuff?

Islamic State posted pictures on the Internet calling on German Muslims to carry out Brussels-style attacks in Germany, singling out Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices and the Cologne-Bonn airport as targets, the SITE intelligence group reported.

German Of The Day: Wut-Burger

March 30, 2016 By in Hard Facts, Hate, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

No, not Wut-Bürger (enraged citizen). Wut-Burger (Angriest Whopper), from Burger King. For enraged citizens, of course.

Wut-Burger

Talk about your Umsatz (sales). They’re going to be going through the roof. Just like all of the Wut-Bürger out there who are going to be ordering these things – available tomorrow!

So like take a chill pill already, folks. Or, better yet, have a relaxing refreshment along with your order. “Would you like a supersize beer with that Wut-Burger, Mr. Wut-Bürger?”

Der Wut-Bürger ist seit Monaten in aller Munde – aber einen Wut-Burger, den hat die Welt noch nicht gesehen.

Drop In Number Of Refugees Due To Merkel’s Asylum Policy?

March 25, 2016 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I think not. Try Austria’s asylum policy of enforcing real border controls.

Tempelhof

The Berlin government is going ahead with plans to expand the big refugee center at Tempelhof airport, even though its population has dropped. According to Berlin’s latest official figures, only around 50 refugees are arriving in Berlin every day – a long way below the 1,000 that sometimes arrived daily last fall…

While Merkel officially has stuck to her line, thereby isolating herself in Europe, Austria has made a drastic about-face within a matter of weeks. In September 2015, Faymann criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s policy of deterrence, and now, Austria is following suit.

Austria has imposed a cap on the number refugees it will allow into the country and the authorities will now only accept 80 asylum applications per day. A four kilometer long fence has been erected near the town of Spielfeld at the Slovenian border. When Hungary built a fence along its border with Serbia in the autumn, Faymann fiercely attacked the activities. Now, even the armed forces are deployed at the Austrian border.

Data Protection, Data Protection, Data Protection…

March 24, 2016 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

This mantra is suddenly not quite as effective as it used to be in Germany.

Data

“We have to expect a long period of terror. London, Madrid, Paris, now Brussels. Even German cities will not be spared in the long run. So far, we have been lucky”, stated Rainer Wendt, chief of the German Police Union at newspaper Passauer Neue Presse.

On this frame, German politicians ask for an increased exchange of information between European authorities, in a country that is really sensitive over privacy issues and has some of the strictest rules on privacy and data protection in the world, partly as a heritage from Germany’s surveillance history through the East German and Nazi dictatorships.

“The best remedy against such attacks is information exchange,” stressed Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

And remember all the NSA, “friends don’t spy on friends” hysteria? U.S., Germany eye ways to deepen cyber collaboration

De Maizière will an die “Datentöpfe.” “Datenschutz ist schön, aber in Krisenzeiten hat Sicherheit Vorrang.”

Spontaneous German Response To Brussels Attacks Hits ISIS Terrorists Where It Hurts Them Most

March 23, 2016 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In their hurts-to-laugh muscle or the so-called “intercostals” located right here, between the ribs, that’s where.

Love

Pictures of smiling people raising a glass to the camera bloomed across social media in Germany on Tuesday, in a spontaneous response to the Brussels attacks…

The “here’s to love” hashtag was launched by a social media editor at Spiegel Online, who posted a picture of herself on Facebook holding a glass with the caption “Here’s to love, listening to one another, respecting oneself and others, being honest, shouting, screaming, talking about everything and drinking, to kissing and confetti, to life and freedom.”

Netz-Reaktionen auf Brüssel: „Gestern und heute wollte es #AufDieLiebe trinken.“

Don’t forget, jihadis: Because the rib cage contracts rapidly during laughing (as with coughing and sneezing), sharp pain can result if there are trigger points in your intercostals. Luckily, relieving these trigger points is often straight forward and fairly simple. Read here to find out more!

News Flash: Wealth Unevenly Distributed Here

March 21, 2016 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Germans everywhere were shocked to discover today that the nation’s wealth has not been evenly, uniformly and fairly distributed as had previously been believed.

Wealth

“Wah? Howya figure?” asked one dumbfounded German upon being informed by Spiegel-Online that the upper ten percent of his fellow countrymen possesses 60 percent of Germany’s wealth while the lower half only owns a lousy 2.5 percent of it (leaving lots of wealth left over somewhere else if I’ve done the math correctly, but still). “This sure is news to me. We Germans have all been raised in the confidence that we live in an ideal, egalitarian society in which things like income inequality are absolutely unthinkable and unheard of, much less possible. Why, these are amerikanische Verhältnisse or something! Why weren’t we informed of this earlier?”

Spiegel-Online apologized for this but then comforted their distraught readers by explaining that at least every German household enjoys having some 214,000 euros ($240,000) at its disposal – on average.

Jeder Haushalt besitzt 214.000 Euro – im Schnitt.

Secret Swagger Or Bausünde?

March 20, 2016 By in High Art, Higher Education, History, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that but I think I’ll still go with Bausünde here.

Bausünde

Berlin’s post-war high rises were built with practicality, not beauty, in mind. The hulking buildings were designed to house as many families as possible, and though they were once desirable, today they aren’t generally considered great places to live. But photographer Malte Brandenburg casts them in a new light with his series Stacked…

The photographer started the project late last year, and shot over a dozen high rises throughout Berlin. He lives in Copenhagen and scouts locations whenever he visits Berlin, seeking out buildings set against an uncluttered skyline. Brandenburg shoots from nearby buildings, parking garages, and other elevated spots so he can capture the towers as directly as possible, using a telephoto lens to help correct the perspective. “I would ring the doorbells of the tower buildings across the street and ask the people to let me in so I could shoot from the stairways,” he says.